Red Rowan: Book 3: Return of the Reluctant Hero

by Helen Gosney

  Karl waited patiently until the laughter subsided again and his friends wiped their eyes.

  “I was in one of the squads that caught him as he came around the Parade Ground to the Captain’s office. We knew that he wouldn’t just come with us quietly, but… Beldar’s bloody breeks! He ‘killed’ the lot of us, except me. He said he wouldn’t kill a recruit, so he, um… ‘broke my leg’ instead.”

  “Gods! How many of you were there?”

  “Eight.”

  “Was he armed?”

  “Umm, not exactly. He had a bloody broom that he’d found somewhere… in the stables, I suppose. Lucky for us it wasn’t a damned pitchfork. He used the thing like a quarterstaff, had five of us down before we knew what was what and then he disarmed one of the lads and used his sabre to ‘kill’ the rest. We simply couldn’t bloody stop him. Of course, I was only a recruit, but the rest of the squad certainly weren’t.”

  “He ‘disabled’ me a couple of times too,” Bryn said, “Suddenly there he was and he asked me very politely if I’d prefer to be killed, or crippled, or tied up and humiliated?”

  “Not much of a choice! What did you choose?”

  “I chose what Red said he’d choose himself. Tying up and humiliating. A bit of embarrassment never killed anyone, he said, and when you get over it you get to live another day in some comfort. He said you can’t do that if you can’t walk, or you’ve been blinded, and you sure as hell can’t do it if your neck’s been broken, no matter how big a hero folk say you are.” Bryn was serious for a moment. “And he was right.”

  “Didn’t he say something about you having a chance to get out of your bonds and save the garrison too?” Thom said.

  “Ha! Aye, he did. He said I could still be a bloody hero if I was truly set on the idea and quick enough about it. Not that I ever was, he can tie knots like nobody I’ve ever known,” Bryn grinned. “Do you remember the night he ‘killed’ the entire Watch and ‘murdered’ the Commandant, Thom? He left an axe beside the old boy’s bed and a note of apology for his wife… and a pumpkin on Captain Johan’s desk labelled ‘Commandant’s head’.”

  Karl stared at him in amazement.

  “You’re making things up now!”

  “No, truly. The old bastard was furious, of course, but the rest of us fell about laughing when we heard. Of course we got a hell of a bollocking about it, for not catching Red and stopping him. ‘A bloody disgraceful effort’, the old boy reckoned. It was worth it, though.”

  “Shame he didn’t really murder the old bugger,” Thom said grimly.

  “Aye, it surely was,” Bryn agreed soberly. He brightened again though. “Red could even get out of the garrison when it was in lockdown. He could climb anything and he was so damned quick and so quiet about it that we simply couldn’t stop him. One of the sergeants used to run a book on how long it’d take him to get from the dungeons to the Gate and knock politely to be let in again.”

  “Dear Gods. And Captain Johan encouraged it?”

  “Not the gambling. But aye, he wanted the garrison kept on its toes and it was a good way to do it. Sometimes he’d send in others to do the job and sometimes he’d even go with Red, so he could see the weak points in the defence. They were a damned good team, too. Unstoppable.”

  **********

  “And do you remember when he came in disguise, Thom?”

  Bryn and Thom looked at each other again and laughed uproariously.

  Karl rolled his eyes and sighed.

  “What the hell do you mean?” he hissed, “Stop bloody laughing and tell the damned story or I’ll have to box your stupid ears for you, you giggling idiots!”

  Bryn and Thom laughed a bit more, but pulled themselves together when Karl looked likely to make good on his threat.

  “Sorry, Karl. Sorry,” Bryn finally managed, “Captain Johan and Red decided to change things a bit. Sort of up the ante a bit, I suppose. So he disguised himself a couple of times too.”

  Karl frowned as he thought about it. Rowan was a tall, powerful man and that wasn’t easy to hide. He’d had long red hair too, and that would’ve been hard to disguise as well. Hmm… unless he posed as a woman… but very few men could really carry that off effectively. And of course that brought him right back to Rowan’s size… and his tattoos.

  “So tell me,” he said, intrigued.

  “Let’s just say that he makes a bloody lovely woman!” Thom chuckled.

  “How the hell could he get away with that? He’s so tall and his shoulders are a lot broader than mine,” Karl said, “Surely he’d look like a… a pantomime Dame, wouldn’t he?”

  Thom and Bryn shrugged.

  Bryn had been on the Watch the day that Captain Johan had come to tell them to be extra attentive to visitors, as Rowan was going to try to come into the garrison in disguise.

  **********

  “Give everyone the hairy eyeball, lads! Everyone!” Johan said with a grin.

  “Aye, Sir. We’ll catch him this time, Sir. Or try very bloody hard to, anyway,” Duty Sergeant Albet Stellsen said, hoping that this might be the time the new and very wily young Lieutenant was caught. It was a good idea, testing the preparedness of the garrison like this, but so far young Red was proving to be almost impossible to stop.

  “Good. He’s a clever bugger, so keep a good eye out.”

  The time had passed uneventfully, though the Watch had given all visitors to the garrison a more than usually thorough inspection. Most were known personally to someone or other on the Watch, and those that weren’t were questioned carefully. One of the local merchants hadn’t been impressed with the increased security, though.

  “What the hell are you stupid buggers on about now? You’ve known me for bloody years, Jamie!” he’d said fiercely as the Guardsmen inspected his load of foodstuffs carefully and asked his new young apprentice a few searching questions that he felt were totally unnecessary.

  “Aye, I have too, but…” Trooper James Pernell replied nervously.

  The Duty Sergeant hurried over.

  “Just doing our job, Sir,” he said, “I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “Do you think the lad’s going to blow the bloody garrison up, is that it? Don’t be any damned sillier than you can help!”

  Albet looked at the apprentice: a skinny little lad of perhaps fifteen, with short scraggly sandy hair and pale blue eyes. No, he most certainly wasn’t Rowan, unless the man was a bloody genius at disguise.

  “No, Sir. In you go now, Sir. My apologies for any inconvenience to you,” he said, waving them through the Gate.

  A shout of mingled anger and hilarity came from the direction of the Captain’s office as the merchant’s cart headed off to the back of the kitchens.

  “Sergeant Stellsen! Over here, please!”

  Bloody Hells! the Sergeant thought. What have I done now? He hurried over to the Captain’s office to find the man himself standing on the verandah with a sturdy-looking washerwoman beside him. What the Hell?

  “Did you admit this… er… lady earlier, Sergeant?” Johan asked mildly.

  Albet looked the woman over. Tallish, a bit humpbacked, solidly built as most washerwomen seemed to be, a basket full of laundry balanced on her plump hip… she seemed unremarkable. Her hair was a sort of dusty brownish colour, piled untidily under a lacy linen cap; her ample dress was clean but well patched, with a demure neckline and long sleeves and she wore a vast knitted shawl around her strong shoulders.

  “Aye, Sir,” he replied, puzzled, “She came in with the other ladies about… oh, twenty minutes ago, Sir.”

  He recalled one of the troopers saying the only thing the washerwomen could talk about was their aching feet and their damned grandchildren that wanted to be Guardsmen too.

  Johan nodded.

  “Ah. You didn’t notice anything… unusual… about her?”

  Albet suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

  “No, Sir,” he said sadly.

  “Don’t fret yourself,
Sergeant. Neither did I until the bugger got the laughs.”

  Albet sighed and looked more closely at the woman’s slightly grubby face. She brushed a bit of hair out of her eyes and winked at him, smiled a gap-toothed smile, then stood to her full height and stretched her cramped back.

  “Bloody Hells! ‘Tis damned hard on the back, doing that,” Rowan said.

  Albet gaped at the sudden stunning transformation from washerwoman to Lieutenant Rowan in a dress. Johan had already seen it himself, but he still thought it was amazing.

  “How the hell did you do that, Sir?” Albet managed.

  Rowan shrugged as he thought about it.

  “The real secret’s in the walk, I think. But apart from that… a bit of dirt in the hair and on the face, a blacked-out tooth, a nice lacy cap and a hell of a lot of hairpins, and a good big frock with room for a bit of judicious padding. And I’m lucky we foresters don’t have hairy chests, I suppose,” Rowan smiled happily, “Oh, and I had to slump a bit and cover up the tattoos, and try not to make eye contact. And choose an occupation that gives a woman calluses. All laundry ladies have rough hands, poor creatures.”

  Johan and Albet glanced quickly at Rowan’s hands. They were certainly callused, just as their own hands were, but Rowan’s hands were long-fingered and not as broad and heavy-looking as theirs and they didn’t appear out of place on a good-sized woman.

  “Gods, Rowan!” Johan said, “I still can’t believe it. I know you said you thought you’d be able to do it, but…”

  “Thank you, Sir. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, but ‘twasn’t quite as hard as I’d thought, to be truthful. As I say, the secret’s in the walk. Get that right, and the rest of it more or less right, and… job’s done, Sir, with all respect to the Watch.”

  Johan nodded thoughtfully.

  “Show us this walk then, lad,” he said.

  “Aye, Sir.”

  Rowan frowned in thought, then slumped his back and rounded his shoulders and lowered his head as if exhausted. Instantly he was a washerwoman, stumbling along wearily with her heavy load. ‘She’ reached up and brushed her hair out of her face, sighed and mumbled about being worked to the bone by these useless lumps of Guardsmen and their damned dirty socks, then walked away with her basket on her hip, her tired feet aching.

  Even knowing that ‘she’ was Rowan, Johan and Albet blinked in astonishment and shook their heads.

  **********

  “Bugger me!” Karl said as he tried to picture it. “Did he do that often?”

  Bryn shook his head, remembering.

  “No. He was pretty busy with everything else he was doing. But the best time was when he… he pretended he was his sister… He really does make a lovely woman if he sets his mind to it,” he dissolved in helpless laughter again.

  Karl thought very seriously about boxing his friend’s ears if he didn’t get a bit more control of himself.

  “Idiot!” he said, “Did he truly do that?”

  Thom spoke up quickly.

  “Aye, he did. It’s true, I swear it! He… he just walked up to the Gate and… one of our friends, Jaxon, was on the Watch that day… of course they’d all been warned to keep an extra good watch out, to be more alert…”

  **********

  Recruit Jaxon Tull was on the day Watch and he was taking his duties very, very seriously. He was determined that Lieutenant Rowan wouldn’t get past him, even if he did somehow manage to get past his colleagues. He was such a distinctive looking man, how the hell could he possibly…?

  Jaxon’s attention was taken by a tall, beautiful woman who was coming towards the Gate. Oh, she was a stunner, and not in a cheap, gaudy way. No, she was demurely dressed in a dark blue dress that flattered her slim figure, with a matching cape swirling from her shoulders. Her hair was auburn, tumbling well past her waist in loose waves. Hang on a minute, Jaxon thought, just as the same thought crossed Duty Sergeant Orson’s mind.

  “Ha! Here he comes, I think, lads! Be careful now. He’s a wily bugger, for all that he’s a bloody hopeless liar,” Orson hissed.

  The woman came closer.

  “Er… Lieutenant Rowan doesn’t walk like that, Sarge!” somebody whispered.

  No, he certainly didn’t walk with a slight sway of the hips and body like that. His was the oddly graceful but decidedly masculine walk of a great hunting cat.

  “Keep your wits about you! She’s certainly not Wirran, with red hair like that! Who the hell else could it be?”

  The woman detoured to a little flowering shrub. She bent over and plucked a flower and tucked it into her magnificent hair. Then she straightened up and smiled at the gawking Guardsmen, and walked towards them.

  Gods! If that really IS the Lieutenant, he makes a bloody beautiful woman, Orson thought as he hastily pulled himself together.

  “Good day, my lady,” he said cautiously.

  “A good day to you, Sir,” the woman said in a soft contralto and the accent of Sian, “I’m hoping you might be able to help me, please…”

  “Certainly, my lady,” Orson said, surprised to hear the accent as he knew that Rowan was an excellent mimic. “What can I do to assist you today?”

  Up close the woman was very beautiful, with clear pale skin, lovely high cheekbones and full lips with perhaps a touch of glossy colour on them. Her hair gleamed brightly in the sun and her unusual coloured eyes were fringed with long dark lashes. She looked straight at the Duty Sergeant and held out a daintily gloved hand.

  “My name is Rose dalla Glyn del’Quist,” she said, “My brother, Rowan d’Rhys, is stationed here. I thought… I wondered if I might be able to, er, to see him. If he’s not too busy…?” her voice trailed away charmingly as she realised the enormity of her request.

  Orson stared at her more closely as he automatically took the proffered hand. He knew that Rowan had a sister, had in fact seen her at the garrison when some of Rowan’s kin had been visiting not long after his appointment. She’d looked very, very like this lovely lady whose hand he was still shaking.

  He hastily released the hand, noting that the grip had been firm but not untoward and the hand itself wasn’t overly large. He risked a glance at the woman’s slim but shapely body, hoping not to give offence if she really was Red Rowan’s sister.

  Her long blue dress was modestly cut, long-sleeved and full-skirted and Orson could just see the tips of her shiny black boots peeping from under the hem. Not overly big feet for a tall woman, he thought. He saw that a bone-handled clan knife hung at the lady’s hip, as was proper for a forester woman. A wispy lace scarf filled in most of her décolletage and a well-cut cloak swung from her shoulders in heavy folds. Her hair seemed to be a few shades more fiery than Lieutenant Rowan’s, but it was hard to be certain without seeing them side-by-side. A faint scent of violets surrounded her.

  Orson gulped. He didn’t know. He truly didn’t know, and he couldn’t see how he could be certain without causing unpardonable offence to the lady.

  “Er… your brother is Red Rowan, my lady? The… er, er, the Champion, I mean?” he managed.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” she laughed with a very attractive throaty chuckle, “But if the silly bugger’s not here, or running about waving a sword or something…”

  Orson glanced at his men, saw they were as befuddled as he was himself, and made his decision.

  “Do you have any identification, my lady?”

  Jaxon’s jaw dropped at the request. He hastily shut his mouth.

  The woman looked surprised, then smiled a little wickedly. “Well, no, apart from my face. I’m told we look a lot alike, except when Rowan’s got a beard of course. Got the same eyes, they say,” her green-brown eyes sparkled with merriment, “Or… well, I could show you my clan tattoo, I suppose… ‘Tis like his only smaller, but ‘tis in a, um, place that’s not usually on display…” she looked down at her chest and plucked at her lacy scarf.

  Great bloody Hells! Orson and the rest of the Watch blushed to a man and
turned their heads away.

  “No, no, my lady! That’s not necessary! Not necessary at all!” Orson managed, shocked to the core as every decent Wirran man would be. “I… I, er… I think he’s out working his horses, but, um… he shouldn’t be long. Perhaps you could wait in the, er… the Officers’ Mess, my lady. Recruit Jaxon will take you there and see that you’re comfortable…” he turned to the lad quickly, “Jaxon! Take Lady Rose to the Officers’, get her a nice cup of tea and…”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I’d love a nice cup of tea. But maybe I could have a quick word with Captain Johan while I wait for that useless brother of mine. I’m sure I just saw him go into his office,” Rose said with a smile. “I’ve not seen him for months, but I’m sure he’d remember me and I don’t think he’d mind…”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind either, my lady,” Orson said gallantly, knowing full well that the Captain would not only remember her, but would be delighted to see Rowan’s beautiful sister again. He gave Jaxon new instructions and sighed slightly as the recruit strutted away importantly, Rose walking easily at his side.

  She turned her head and winked at him, waggled her shapely hips in a most unladylike manner, and headed for the Captain’s office. Orson felt his jaw drop and his heart sink as the knowledge he’d just been utterly HAD hit him with full force. He resolved to never, ever, under any circumstances, play cards with Lieutenant Rowan.

  **********

  “Great bloody Hells!” Karl said reverently, “Did he really, honestly…?”

  “… Wear a dress and shamelessly charm the day Watch? Oh, aye, he truly did. And, you know, I don’t think any of them ever really recovered from it. Poor Jaxon blushed every time he saw Red after that.”

  Karl stared at his friends and began to laugh. Thom and Bryn were already chuckling happily and the merriment went on for quite a while.

  **********

  37. “… too young, too inexperienced.”

  “He was unconventional, that’s for sure, but all the same Red Rowan truly was the best damned Captain either of us has ever served under, Karl,” Thom said when he finally pulled himself together again, “He was firm, but fair, and he had the garrison very fit and well trained, ready and able to face anything. He didn’t mess about, and you always knew where you stood with him. He never held a grudge against anyone who’d done the wrong thing, and he never asked us to do anything that he wasn’t prepared to do himself.”